As the newspaper industry struggles on life support—with circulation and ad revenue in flux and the once lively newsroom culture replaced by empty cubicles and whispers of buyouts—I cannot help but wonder what will come of my first career, America’s other pastime: the paper route.

Popularized and depicted in movies and television as a neighborhood staple, the paperboy is now cycling down a path to becoming obsolete—replaced by online editions and virtual news aggregators. This shift has required a new way of thinking for marketers, as the paperboy symbolically served not only as news messenger, but a reliable, trustworthy and uncluttered bridge from brand to consumer. Dramatic? Perhaps—but before you read your next blog post or tweet about your morning brew, take a second and process what consumer branding and PR will look like without daily—relatively objective—newspapers.

TIME magazine recently chronicled the journalism crisis and sourced a Pew Research Center study revealing last year, for the first time, “more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines.” And excluding the Wall Street Journal, most news outlets have shied away from online paid subscription services when information is so easily accessible for free.

This all comes as no surprise to PR professionals who continue to evolve to manage an abundance—albeit highly segmented—of on and offline news space, skeleton editorial staffs altering how we “pitch” and increased reliance on often faceless and less accountable bloggers.

While the demise of traditional print journalism seems inevitable, there are those fighting for its survival. The Newspaper Project, launched in February by top news executives, is designed to empower people to talk, brainstorm and share ideas on how to save the industry. Likewise, publishing leaders are taking action with calls for anti-trust revisions allowing newspapers to collect revenue from news aggregators.

Despite the love/hate relationship between PR practitioners and reporters, we need each other—now more than ever—and it’s in our best interest to get engaged and support initiatives to prolong, if not save, the newspaper industry.

If for nothing else, do it for the few remaining paperboys.

Comments

Chris M

June 27, 2009 7:59 PM I, for one, still love a newspaper where I can read articles at my leisure and pick up where I left off if interrupted and know up front when I'm reading a paid advertisement or a news article. So many times I've begun reading an on-line story only to be interrupted and not able to quickly find the exact same article again the next day perhaps. The other annoyance is not really knowing who is behind the information or if there is a hidden agenda.

Byron

June 30, 2009 9:13 AM Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot, in fact most of my news online, but I agree with you Chris M—there’s nothing like a hard copy newspaper. My challenge with the blog world is the lack of accountability. Journalist are trained professionals, and at their core are groomed, constructed to report “somewhat” objectively (though after last year’s presidential election we should question that as well). That old saying “don’t believe everything you read” is taking on a whole new meaning now!

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